Three Times a Millionaire and now Penniless.

Auckland Star, Volume XII, Issue 3546, 17 December 1881, Page 4 (Supplement)

Three Times a Millionaire and now Penniless.

The " San Francisco Sunday Chronicle" of August 14th says : — Many old Califoruiiuis shook their heads thoughtfully yesterday morning over their coffee as they read in the records of the city prison tne condensed testimony of "Johnny" Skac's extreme poverty. 'flic history of Mr Skac's elevation to the dignity of a millionaire and his rapid return to the humility of a poor man would excite the deepest wonder in a community where the wheel of fortune, revolves more slowly than is agreeable to the adventurous Califomian. Mr Skae was born iv Canada. One of his parents being Scotch and the other Irish, it is rather diilicult to classify him nationally. It is an established fact, however, that, like the majority of men who have acquired great wealth on the Pacific coast, lie started in the race for fame from a humble position. Ho was a telegraph operator of uncommon ability, which was utilised in the business of transmitting despttchc3 between the Comstock and the San Francisco stock market. The great lodo was almost bursting with the promise of untold millions, and the whole coast was in the throes of a malignant mining fever. The wires were burdened with the history of the lode from day to day, and there was no one read the story with more interest than Johnny Skae, the telegraph operator. It lives in the history of the Com&vOck, and the anecdotes of the telegraph office that the little Canadian operator not only had the secret despatches, but, unlike the majority of his craft, possessed the business tact to make capital of his knowledge. The information thrust before him day by day made him master of the situation as far as his capital could extend, and he continued to expand the limits of hiw operations until the telegraph office knew him no more. He abandoned telegraphy to assume' control of the Virginia and Gold Hill Water Works-a piece of engineering skill which represented a vast outlay of money and labour, and promised a proportionate profit on the investment. Water, strange as the fact may seem, is the most prized of the fluids that enter into the sum of the Cornstock's requirements, and Mr Skae found himself on the high road to fortune, with Sharon, Jones, and the other magnates of the sierras well in sight. The easy pace of a prudent bondholder was not to the liking of Mr Skae, however, and he embraced all the opportunities that the Stock Market offered for excitement until the fame of the big bonanza set half the country at its wit's end. Johnny Skae had but a small amount of the stock when it commenced to climb the scale of prices, but he dashed at the market, and with astounding recklessness, followed the securities until Consolidated Virginia was close to the thousand dollar limit, and the value of California mining stock .was set at an equally exorbitant sum. When the " deal" ended, and the tidal wave of excitement had receded, leaving the market strewn with the wreck, Johnny Skae was three million dollars ahead. £0 California-street said; and the scarred, war-worn veterans of Pauper Alley talked reverentially of his luck, for he seemed to bear, a charmed sack. With the ebb of the bonanza excitement, the fame of the winner grew less, and was finally eclipsed. The palatial residences that the newly-made magnates had built, became, by the mutations of an'unEioli table stock market, plain boardingouses. The capacious stables, once full of the blue blood of-the Kentucky pastur-. ages, became the resting places of the de-graded-livery hacks." One by one the millionaires were gathered into the Nevada Bank and lost to the outside and no longer endearing world. With the others went Johnny Skae. So report said, and the public mind, having satisfied itself that the ; ex-telegrapher was no longer a millionaire, expunged him from its most sensitive spot. Those who watched the stock market, and the figures revolving round it, knew that Johnny Skae was still interested in the insecurities,. but it took a practised eye to detect his presence. H s reckless system of lighting luck by doubling up, until his margins were too thin te support his airy castles, had made a sad inroad on his three million clean up, and left him to hang hishopes on a few speculative properties. In this un'nvitiiig category was thelSicrra Nevada mine, of which Mr Skae was Presidont. Hope long deferred had made the Sierra Nevada stockholders very sick indeed. The stock was down to bedrock, but even at that state Mr Skae did not want it. The market seemed dead. The Comstock gave no hope of a resurrection, Consolidated Virginia was selling for a song. Savage was full of water, Yellow Jacket was reminding its stockholders every month of the expensive-

ness ot its pumps. Overman had discouraged even Bob Morrow. Along the whole length of the lode there was only barrenness and despair. A sudden desire for travel possessed the mining men. Mr Skae, obeying popular impulse, went East. Ho had not reached his destination iwhen the entire aspect of affairs on the Comstock and on the San Francisco stock market was changed by a few despatches. One of these iuforincd Mr Skac that there were indications of a bonanza in Sierra Nevada, and lie came back as fast as a special train could carry him. An examination of the mine convinced him that a great bonanza was in prospect, and, with alt his characteristic recklessness, he dashed into the market. He had only 3000 shares of Sierra Nevada, and not a great deal of his three million clean-up on Consolidated Virginia. All tbat he had, however, went to his brokers, and the substantial firm on Pine-street which he patronised .vas ordered to "double up." The firm doubled for the bold speculator, and he bought on his broker's money until the stock stood at 278 dols a share. The same tactics and the same firm had stood him in "the Consolidated Virginia and California excitement, and seemed to be serving him well again. He became the lion of the hour. Before it had been flood, but. the new star eclipsed the Nevada Bank, He was hailed as the "father of the new bonanza," and his prospective millions counted up by his admirers, until Vanderbilt's fortune seemed only a pitance. Songs in his praise were made. An alleged poet, now engaged on a stock paper, described the magnates hasty return from the East in a parody on "Sheridan's Hide," and headed "Johnny Skea's Hide.'1 The eulogized magnate left no stone unturned to increase his popularity. He lost $00,000, it wassaid, atone poker game in the Palace Hotel in one night. His unostentatious acts of charity here, however, were nothing to his benevolent exploits on the Comstock, where a millionaire who does not live up to the tenets of the town is regarded as fit for no nobler purpose than to label him for Congress or the Senate and ship him to Washington. Mr Skstc's trout breakfasts at the Virginia and Gold Hill Waterworks will live long in the memory of the Virginia gourmands. There was no ridiculous exclusiveness about the festivities,for half the town participated, and the supply of fish and wine was ever equal to the demand. The trout were specially planted in the reservoir for the occasion, and having been taken from ponds where they had' been regularly fed, fell easy victims to the experienced anglers of the Comstock, accustomed to measure their poles with the wary tomcod and the illusive flounder of the Carson River. For weeks the fame of Mr Skae transcended that of any millionaire on the Pacific coast; but the wane of his star was soon observed. The crosscuts in the 1700-foot level of the promised bonanza stubbornly refused to yield two-thousand-dollar-assays, and by rapid stages the public distrust of the property increased, until a porphyry horse kicked the last prop from the confidence of the market and precipitated a panic. The subsequent events tending to produce the present stagnation on the stock market are too recent to need description. When the echoeg of the crash had died away, Johnny Skae, the temporary idol of the Comstock, the "fatherof the new bonanza," the princely pokerplayer, and the lavish exemplar of Nevada hospitality, was virtually a pauper. He had he'd his stock to the top figure, and when the crash came his "margin*" were swept away. After a while he was heard of in Columbus district, and was reported to have made another strike, but the report was evidently based on his old luck, for lie soon after turned up as an inmate of the Small-pox Hospital. He served for some time as book-keeper of that institution, and then disappeared from public ken until the police round him in a helpless condition on the street, and locked him up in default of 5 doMars bail. Checkered as the typical life of the West 'is, it furnishes few such examples of misadventure as that of a man who in two y^eare,. reached such extremes of affluence and poverty that he might have written his cheek for ten millions and now could not pay five dollars.